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Self-Host All the Things?

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Re: Self-Host All the Things?

#201

Post by wankle »

tedivm wrote: post #14
gwbrooks wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get high deliverability -- the keys, whether you're using your own servers or someone else's come down to a clean list that won't generate complaints and staying within the TOS of your mailserver host or third-party SMTP service. Host your mail-creation/list-management/analytics stack yourself (I like Mautic and MailWizz but there are other options) and use a third party for SMTP services. Amazon SES charges…

I'm not sure why you're getting the downvotes but this is the way for people who want some level of self hosting. I finally gave up hosting my own mail server about two years ago- I had been self hosting email since 2005, but it reached the point where delivery to the big companies was extremely difficult. If someone wants to host their own software but actually have their emails delivered they really do need a third…

> I finally gave up hosting my own mail server

A lot of us haven't.

> If someone wants to host their own software but actually have their emails delivered they really do need a third party SMTP service that specialized in deliverability or has a big company behind it.

A lot of us don't.

Re: Self-Host All the Things?

#202

Post by scruple »

beaukin wrote: post #200
stonewall wrote: post #68

I self-host literally everything (email, calendar/contacts, VOIP, XMPP, you name it) from by basement with used 1U servers from eBay and a cable internet connection. It was probably more hassle than most people would want to bother with to get it set up. But, with everything up and running, there's very little maintenance. I probably spend a few hours a month tinkering still, just because I enjoy it. I use a stack of…

This GitHub share is pure gold. You’re amazing.

Agreed. It's divine compared to the janky Ansible setups I've seen in the wild.

Re: Self-Host All the Things?

#203

Post by stonewall »

beaukin wrote: post #200
stonewall wrote: post #68

I self-host literally everything (email, calendar/contacts, VOIP, XMPP, you name it) from by basement with used 1U servers from eBay and a cable internet connection. It was probably more hassle than most people would want to bother with to get it set up. But, with everything up and running, there's very little maintenance. I probably spend a few hours a month tinkering still, just because I enjoy it. I use a stack of…

This GitHub share is pure gold. You’re amazing.

Thank you for the kind words :)

Re: Self-Host All the Things?

#204

Post by Helmut10001 »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #148
stonewall wrote: post #68

I self-host literally everything (email, calendar/contacts, VOIP, XMPP, you name it) from by basement with used 1U servers from eBay and a cable internet connection. It was probably more hassle than most people would want to bother with to get it set up. But, with everything up and running, there's very little maintenance. I probably spend a few hours a month tinkering still, just because I enjoy it. I use a stack of…

I had fun doing this until I had kids. I have a rack with 10gbe, ups, kubernetes a zfs storage server, multiple vlans, 4 unifi APs & locally hosted controller and all sorts of self-hosted stuff. My heart breaks slightly as I watch things slowly degrade and break down due to bit-rot and version creep, I now wish I had a synology, flat network and cloud everything possible. There are days when the kids can't watch a pa…

This is of course very context dependent and no critique whatsoever. I also have kids and my self-hosting became ever more important since. No Youtube commercials or auto-continuation for kid-videos thanks to invidious, reduced costs due to a lot of cancelled software plans (because everything runs on my rust), I can care better for my parents, e.g. helping with technology, monitoring, burglars (my homelab sits at my parents house, remotely connected via IPSEC), data backup is solid and under my control (ZFS Rz2, & offsite backup with borgmatic & rsync), and most important I have reduced my life dependencies and lock-in effects to worldwide companies.

Maintenance is 1-2 hours a month: Proxmox, various Docker nested in unprivileged LXC, everything automated (cronjobs, Watchtower, Backups etc.). I also built a pretty big PV-plant to safe energy costs (30wkp). My main strategy was a "minimal" approach, going slowly, thinking carefully _what I really need_ and preferring robustness over new features or software. I usually take 1-2 months of review before deciding to install any new software, most often longer. I am against the "All in One" mentality (e.g. prefer custom bash scripts over third-party automation; or selectively install needed parts instead of the all-in-one alternatives, e.g. nextcloud/all-in-one).

Re: Self-Host All the Things?

#205

Post by gibs0ns »

I self host a lot, including some business related infrastructure for my home office (some employees also work from here). However services designed to be accessed by a wider public audience (eg; websites, emails, Nextcloud) are hosted on a rented dedi.

As other comments have pointed out, kids suck up every minute of your life, and when the internet or Plex don't work I'll know about it real quick (DAAAAD!). The important question for me is; how fast can I rebuild all of this if all the drives were wiped?

Here is my home setup;

Hardware:

* OPNSense - old i5 desktop, 70GB hdd, 20GB RAM

* TrueNAS - AMD A10-5800K, 16TB hdd, 1TB ssd, 8GB RAM

* OpenNebula Frontend - Random Intel NUC, 128GB ssd, 4GB RAM

* OpenNebula KVM Node - Xeon ?, 4TB hdd, 64GB RAM

* OpenNebula KVM Node - Xeon Silver ?, 2TB ssd, 128GB RAM + GTX 1070Ti

* Unifi EdgeSwitch ES-48

* Unifi WAP's

Software:

* OPNSense for routing

* OpenNebula for VM's

* Nomad for docker containers

* NetMaker for Wireguard based VPN

Main Apps:

* Home Assistant VM

* Plex (+rtorrent+sonarr+radarr+jackett+ombi) containers

* FusionPBX container for VoIP

* Kasm for remote desktops

* Rundeck container for various infrastructure based automation jobs

* Zabbix + Grafana containers for monitoring

* PacketFence VM for NAC

* Shinobi container for NVR

* Snapcast container for multi-room audio

I also have plenty of containers and VM's for various testing apps, or dev projects.

All of my non-critical containers (eg; Plex) self update daily at early morning hours.

For the critical stuff, I have tried to automate updates as much as possible.

The majority of things can be recreated from ansible, docker compose, or Nomad scripts, all of which are backed up to an offsite Nextcloud instance.

I use a lot of services on Opnsense, but I think one of the most important for me is the Traffic Shaper, allowing for bandwidth control.

I have about 14 VLAN's, and am in the process of setting up VXLAN's for further isolation.

I use restic for encrypted backups, stored in Wasabisys.com (no cost to download, unlike Backblaze).

I will admit there is still one design flaw that I'm yet to spend time overcoming; if everything is powered on at the same time, there is a chance some devices won't get an IP because OpnSense is not yet ready. My current flawless work-around is to boot Opnsense 30 seconds before everything else.

Re: Self-Host All the Things?

#206

Post by zamnos »

stonewall wrote: post #68

I self-host literally everything (email, calendar/contacts, VOIP, XMPP, you name it) from by basement with used 1U servers from eBay and a cable internet connection. It was probably more hassle than most people would want to bother with to get it set up. But, with everything up and running, there's very little maintenance. I probably spend a few hours a month tinkering still, just because I enjoy it. I use a stack of…

What do you do for backups? If your house gets destroyed in a natural disaster, will all your pictures persist?

Re: Self-Host All the Things?

#207

Post by stonewall »

zamnos wrote: post #206
stonewall wrote: post #68

I self-host literally everything (email, calendar/contacts, VOIP, XMPP, you name it) from by basement with used 1U servers from eBay and a cable internet connection. It was probably more hassle than most people would want to bother with to get it set up. But, with everything up and running, there's very little maintenance. I probably spend a few hours a month tinkering still, just because I enjoy it. I use a stack of…

What do you do for backups? If your house gets destroyed in a natural disaster, will all your pictures persist?

I regularly back up to some external HDDs that I keep outside the home.

For pictures specifically, I recently discovered M-Disc [0], which are (allegedly) archival-quality, writable Blu-Ray discs. I'm considering burning an M-Disc of each year's pictures and storing them in jewel cases at a family member's house.

[0] https://www.mdisc.com/

Re: Self-Host All the Things?

#208

Post by dijit »

chillfox wrote: post #121
dijit wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, about 2% of my "Thank you for ordering, here is your receipt" mails also get marked as spam. Some number of people just smack the "spam" button for nearly everything that is automated, and those "spam" buttons seem to work on absolute numbers not percentages; so if you have a high number of people in the pool then you will be false flagged eventually. We had a very explicit double opt-in system, made it super ea…

I don't mark receipts as spam, but I do delete them without opening them and I really can't blame the people who mark them as spam. When I buy something, I get a notification from my bank, instantly, that's basically the receipt in a standardized compact form (2 lines of text) with the amount in my local currency. This is much more useful than the receipts online stores send where the relevant details are buried in s…

> When I buy something in a physical store they have the decency to ask if I want a receipt. I don't understand why that's such a hard concept for online stores/services to get, ask me if I want a receipt

2 things though.

1) Your goods arent given to you at point of sale with online transactions.

what happens then if it doesn't show up? tracking numbers aren’t always generated on the fly (it depends mostly on the postal service being used if the site can pre-generate tracking numbers).

2) How do you return the item, if you have no proof of purchase?

You could say “keep it in my account” but then how do we even keep an account for you if we cant even verify your email address for password reset mails?

Re: Self-Host All the Things?

#209

Post by goplayoutside »

Pika Pods[1] deserves a mention here. No affiliation.

Previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31284512

It's essentially "self hosting as a service". They package popular foss projects in docker containers and run them for you (on fly io, iirc) for a dollar or three per month.

1. https://www.pikapods.com/

Re: Self-Host All the Things?

#210

Post by thr717272 »

thr717272 wrote: post #193
ihateolives wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have kids? It doesn't work that way. It will never be urgent enough to waste time even for setting up the alarm or prompt. People vastly overestimate free time when you have kids. They somehow manage to eat up every single minute.

As a dad with more kids than the average around here I feel you. For me it has improved slightly lately: I have recently started giving my kids bonus allowance if they let me work the hours I need. And lately I have also played more card games and board games with them in the evenings. That said, I am up at around 0400 to start the day and I have already spent 15 minutes on HN so I need to leave now :-)

Follow up: it helps that they all sleep through the night now and that the pandemic is over so they are at school or kindergarten during core hours at work.
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